Future of VR gaming (2023)

ShiWarrior

ShiWarrior

ShiWarrior

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Now that I've seen this video, i think he hits the nail on the head

summary,

Next year (2023) will be huge

thanks to PlayStation VR2 and the headsets that are currently out and also coming out next year, fan base has increased ten fold

triple A titles will be coming thanks to the above, and looks like 2023 will be a mega year

 
Despite all the doom mongers on reddit attempting to convince us otherwise with their weekly circle jerks, i've listened to enough developers on various podcasts hint at a more prosperous future.

They know what other people are working on but can't say.
 
I think VR is growing, it going slower than expected but major events like HL:A, Quest2 and PS5 VR see a step up in numbers.

What holds it back from my perspective is games developers not nailing the quality and support, it damages the experience and reputation.
- DCS struggling with game engine performance, single threaded CPU bound with no known date for multi-threading
- Frontier Developments also struggling with engine performance and hashing up Odyssey with some poor low-effort attempt at on-foot VR with no commitment to say or do anything
- New releases like Green Hell VR trying to talk their way out of the blindly obvious performance issues
- Enthusiast HMDs demanding big $$$ but having issues

Organisations seem very keen to market and take gamers money, pushing products out the door but then turning a blind eye to quality issues and then going deaf. That's not true of everyone of course but those that do cause harm to the reputation of VR and that's a shame... We'll get there
 
My worry is that these AAA titles, if they appear, will all be exclusive to different platforms and not available for PCVR, so you'll have to own multiple headsets to play them all.
 
The only market big enough for things to really be exclusive, is Quest 2, with about 15 million (android standalone perhaps). However, quite a few games for that also offer better graphics on PCVR versions. I don't think anyone can hope to survive on exclusives easily.
 
Meta has bought a bunch of quality VR developers, and they're all likely working on big AAA games. However the launch lineup for PSVR isn't looking that good - mainly Quest and PC ports. Hopefully that'll change but it takes a long while to create AAA games.

Meta has some great PC games that have been effectively abandoned - Stormland, From Other Suns, Lone Echo 1 & 2, etc. It'd be interesting if they could arrange with Sony for some IP swaps to get these on PSVR and get some Sony PSVR games on Quest. Insomniac who are now owned by Sony created Stormland.
 
BigBANGtheory said:
- DCS struggling with game engine performance, single threaded CPU bound with no known date for multi-threading
- Frontier Developments also struggling with engine performance and hashing up Odyssey with some poor low-effort attempt at on-foot VR with no commitment to say or do anything
- New releases like Green Hell VR trying to talk their way out of the blindly obvious performance issues
Click to expand...

The common denominator there is the PC, not VR. The issues in the first two games aren't confined to VR. The performance problems in Green Hell VR are only in the PC version of the game.

The future of VR gaming is standalone. It will be like consoles. Developers will be able to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their games without having to worry about a myriad of different hardware/software configurations.
 
melmac said:
The future of VR gaming is standalone. It will be like consoles. Developers will be able to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their games without having to worry about a myriad of different hardware/software configurations.
Click to expand...
Perhaps one day in distant future, standalone needs PC for the realism the heavy graphics work, at least until they figure out how to render in a datacentre and deal with the network latency.

personally, I've zero interest in the games that run soley on the headset integrated graphics chips they don't provide the VR experiences anywhere close to what attracts me to VR
 
BigBANGtheory said:
Perhaps one day in distant future, standalone needs PC for the realism the heavy graphics work, at least until they figure out how to render in a datacentre and deal with the network latency.

personally, I've zero interest in the games that run soley on the headset integrated graphics chips they don't provide the VR experiences anywhere close to what attracts me to VR
Click to expand...

The last two years have shown that Standalone VR gaming is here now and will continue to grow. There is no money in PCVR, but countless problems. Your previous post shows that.

PSVR2 will be successful because developers will only have to cater for one configuration and there will be a large player base there.

This is about the Future, not what's here and now. PCVR will become even more niche as standalone hardware improves and the cost of PC hardware continues to rise.
 
melmac said:
This is about the Future, not what's here and now
Click to expand...

Bizarre, considering your entire reasoning is based on what currently is. The 'future' is streaming and content platforms, that's what the industry is currently arming up for. Juvenile tribalistic hardware platform debates will be a thing of the past, thankfully:rolleyes:
 
i think there will always be a number of vr users who will want the best graphics/games possible and are willing to spend on expensive pc hardware/pcvr hmd's.
i'm 1 of them. i don't play standalone much. but i do hope the standard of standalone games continues to improve, no doubt it will do.
hopefully we'll\ reach a point where games are streamed to standalone hmd's so expensive hardware isn't needed.
 
lokiss said:
Bizarre, considering your entire reasoning is based on what currently is. The 'future' is streaming and content platforms, that's what the industry is currently arming up for. Juvenile tribalistic hardware platform debates will be a thing of the past, thankfully:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That line of my post was purely in reference to the current power/performance of mobile processors. Their performance levels now will be surpassed easily by headsets in the future. As standalone headsets get more powerful, they will get even more popular. I think the streaming game future is even further away, but maybe I will be surprised.

And I don't know what you are trying to imply with your last sentence. Are you aiming that at the GPU/CPU section of this forum or something?
 
I can't imagine standalone ever being as good as PCVR because surely as the standalone VR tech advances so will PC tech so will it not always stay ahead?

Apart from increased power consumption, PCVR doesn't bother me and if they can make regular PC games work on a variety of PC configurations then will similar principles not apply to PCVR? I worry that making standalone VR too powerful will also mean more weight on my neck, more heat, more noise from cooling etc and I suspect battery tech would need to advance accordingly to accommodate increased standalone power? PCVR will always have the 'mains power' advantage here.

Perhaps one solution would be some sort of backpack system to supplement standalone and as an alternative to PCVR? You could have what would be effectively a laptop sized unit specifically designed for the VR doing all the hard work strapped to your back, so weight wouldn't really be a problem. Also, because it's strapped to you then using a cable rather than wireless to connect to the VR unit would be feasible. There would also be plenty of scope for additional battery packs for long play. I suppose the downside is that it would probably be a dedicated system for VR so perhaps considered quite expensive compared to a PC that can be used for other stuff, but you wouldn't have to worry about screens, keyboards etc, it would just be a unit for adding grunt to the VR.

As for 2023, I really want to see more games with good and lengthy campaigns. As much as I like online stuff (although I prefer co-op), you are reliant on servers being available and populated.
 
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Removing friction is the key to increasing VR usage.

Unfortunately PC based VR has far more friction than stand-alone. You need to pay thousands of pounds for a decent system with a GPU that can do PCVR justice, and buy the headset on top of that, and then you're tethered to the PC or have to remain in wireless range. Then of course to get into VR on the system it needs to 'just work' which isn't guaranteed with PCVR.

Standalone VR is cheaper, and more importantly has far less friction. You turn it on, put it on your head, and you're in VR.

One compromise might be a dedicated VR console like a PS5 + PSVR with a separate compute unit that wirelessly connects to the headset and controllers, but which is far more portable and much cheaper than a PC VR system.
 
Also even cheap VR won't succeed if it's too much hassle to use, or isn't comfortable.

The GearVR was a pretty cheap way to get into VR but it had too much friction. You had to use your phone, make sure the screen was clean, and then clip the phone into the headset. Then when playing you had poor controls, and awful battery life, and the phone overheated frequently. It was a pretty awful experience.
Then Oculus made the Go which took all the elements of a Gear VR and put them into a standalone headset without the friction, and it was a big success, and paved the way for the Quest headsets.
 
I have to admit that when I was researching VR before buying it the PCVR side did seem a little daunting when reading about how to get it setup and connected. I've still not learned about Side Quest yet! lol

But perhaps similar to the PSVR, if some sort of portable dedicated hardware was developed just for the VR (similar to a games console I guess) and therefore removing the compatibility problem so no friction to supplement the standalone unit, then surely you've got the best of both worlds?
 
ninjag said:
I have to admit that when I was researching VR before buying it the PCVR side did seem a little daunting when reading about how to get it setup and connected. I've still not learned about Side Quest yet! lol

But perhaps similar to the PSVR, if some sort of portable dedicated hardware was developed just for the VR (similar to a games console I guess) and therefore removing the compatibility problem so no friction to supplement the standalone unit, then surely you've got the best of both worlds?
Click to expand...

Yep, that's exactly what I'm suggesting. Plus you can have a dedicated high bandwidth low latency wireless connection that's much better than the standard built-in wifi.

Removing the tether is essential to removing the friction from VR which is why the PSVR is slightly disappointing.
 
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